1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique of monitoring jobs (e.g., print jobs and maintenance jobs) executed in a printer.
2. Description of the Related Art
In conventional printing systems, a print job is typically generated by a host computer, the generated print job is output to a printer, and print data is recorded on a paper medium by the printer.
In such printing systems, a user can determine whether a generated print job has been transferred to the printer by viewing a graphical user interface of a print queue provided in WINDOWS.RTM. by Microsoft Corporation.
In one conventional method of monitoring information about a job in a print queue, a host module (e.g., application) may be used to readily monitor a job status. However, such method may be insufficient in terms of accuracy. For example, the end of a job in the print queue in the operating system may not synchronize with the end of an actual print process performed by the printer. To overcome this problem, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-242443 discloses a job monitoring technique using a language monitor.
The flowchart shown in FIG. 13 illustrates a job monitoring process using the language monitor. In the illustrated job monitoring process, a job is issued in step S1301. Then, a status display application is started in step S1302. Of course, the application may be started before step S1301. The language monitor monitors a status of a printer and transmits a result of the monitoring to the status display application. The status display application inputs the transmitted information in step S1303, and determines data to be displayed on the basis of the input information in step S1304.
However, the following disadvantages may occur when a print job is monitored through the communication between a monitoring unit such as the language monitor and the application. That is, the application may be required to have a function of identifying various output results from the language monitor, necessitating an increase in the complexity of the application program.